Page 4029 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 16 Sept 2009
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well, complete surprise—
and significant concern.
The alarm bells were not just ringing; they should have been clanging loudly with all their might. But it was only when Actew came to the government in cabinet that they started to take any interest. It is worth noting that on that day and yesterday in question time the government said that they would be keeping a “keen eye” on the costs from now on. To use the vernacular, the ACT taxpayers and water consumers are asking themselves, “Why the bloody hell weren’t they doing it a lot earlier than this?”
Let me return briefly to the date on which the Treasurer and the Chief Minister heard about this cost blow-out—24 August. Just two days later, the Minister for Planning issued a media release announcing that he would use his call-in powers in relation to the development application. Yesterday in question time, the Treasurer denied discussing the cost blow-out with the planning minister prior to his announcement about the call-in. Given the proximity of these two dates—24 and 26 August—one could be forgiven for wondering whether, in fact, this is the case. The advantage of the minister using his call-in powers is that it avoids public scrutiny of and consultation on the application. It means the government can push it through, regardless of all that is smelly about the whole project. No doubt the facts will emerge in due course, but only after the people of the ACT have paid dearly.
I have to mention the Murrumbidgee to Googong transfer project as well, and I think that that is very important. In 2005, the future options report recommended that this project proceed at a cost of between $35 million and $40 million. In the Chief Minister’s 2007 announcement that the project would proceed, he indicated that it would cost about—about—$70 million. Given the definition of “a fairly large increase” being more than 200 per cent, one wonders how “about” might be defined.
In estimates this year, Actew’s Managing Director said that the ICRC had accepted a figure of $96.5 million. Mr Sullivan went on to say that they were working towards a figure 30 per cent higher than that, putting it at $125 million. At the same time that he announced the quarter of a billion dollar blow-out in the Cotter Dam costs, which was a fairly large increase, he also said that the Murrumbidgee to Googong transfer would now cost $150 million, up from $30 million to $40 million. While the definition of “a fairly large increase” is 200 per cent, the definition of “about” is, in fact, 275 per cent.
In percentage terms, the cost of the Murrumbidgee to Googong transfer has increased by more than the Cotter Dam since 2005. So let us add the two together—the Cotter Dam enlargement and the Murrumbidgee to Googong transfer. The cost of this package has increased from an estimate in 2005 of $160 million to the princely sum of $513 million—that is more than half a billion dollars since 2005, more than half a billion dollars in four years.
This massive blow-out has taken the government by complete surprise, but they do admit that they are significantly concerned about it. That the government was
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